Only his eyes looked odd.

The face was normal. Oh, he had all his teeth, rare in a man in his apparent mid thirties. Yes, his hair was clean, cleaner than you'd expect, and there were no obvious scars, warts, pustules, or any of the other facial detritus which tended to accumulate when social conventions held that you should take a bath once a year whether you needed it or not. But that only made him look like a portrait, like an idealised, but normal, man. His clothing was clean, perhaps too clean, but it was a normal enough brown tunic trimmed in red, accompanied by a thin grey cloak closed by a silver clasp. A man of means, but not an extraordinary man.

The eyes, though. The eyes.

You couldn't really say precisely what was wrong with them, thought Graig. Normal size, normal shape, a boring brown color. Not glowing red or inverted hourglasses or black voids of infinity or anything else out of the ordinary. Except that...

When you looked into them, you saw forever looking back.

Graig stepped back, blinked, then looked up at him again. Looked at his face, not his eyes.

"I have...er...I have come to..."

The man with the undying eyes spoke, and his voice, too, was seemingly normal. "To petition my aid against...hmm. Let's see. A dragon? No, I'd have heard about it before now. Evil sorceror? That's a guild problem, you wouldn't need me when you've got them. A horde of gibbering subhumans is on the march, ravaging and burning? No, you've got armies for that. That leaves...demons."

Graig clamped down on his reply. That was hardly the tone he expected, or the words. But still...this man was who he was, and who was he to judge? "Your wisdom is legendary, Undying. Yes. They have come again, led by..."

The other shook his head. "Oh, don't bother with the name. You'll probably pronounce it wrong, anyway. Nor do I need a list of their foul and gruesome deeds, as I doubt they've come up with anything original in the past millenia or so. Hm."

He stood up, left his throne of crimson marble, and walked over to a clockwork mechanism of great antiquity and unknown function. It consisted of a number of bands of metal, nested within one another, each fitted with small spheres of different metals -- bronze and gold and silver and others, not so easily named. Large spheres were buried within the outer bands, and everywhere upon it were runes and sigils and markings, some engraved in the metal, some written in liquid gold. A row of wheels and levers ran along the bottom. The Undying studied it carefully, turned a small bronze wheel slightly, and looked again at the runes and markings.

"Azchor The Befouler Of Fields, is it?"

Graig nodded.

"About his time, yes. Not his best choice...a few months from now would have given him a couple more properly

aligned sigils, but he's not the most patient of creatures." He shook his head, then looked at Graig, closely. His eyes

flickered slightly, and his expression changed. It was as if he was actually noticing Graig for the first time.

Graig was not thrilled to think that. He was, after all, barely fit to stand near this man's shadow. He had been chosen by lot (which he suspected was rigged), and was neither priest nor lord nor magician --just a sometimes teacher, sometimes scribe in a town which had only the barest need of either.

"What is your name?" The voice was different, now. There was an edge of interest in it which had not been there before.

"Graig, sir. Son of..."

"I asked about you, not your father. Besides, I don't really want to know your ancestry back too far...I'll probably find out I bedded your great great grandmother, and that would depress both of us no end." He paused. "Graig. Probably would have been Greg or Grage once...or not. Doesn't matter."

His voice faded off, and his eyes seemed unfocussed, or, perhaps, focussed on some point distant in time and space. Graig waited, then, desperate to try to restart the conversation, coughed once, and pointed at the complex mechanism.

"If I may ask, sir...what is that?"

The Undying shook his head, then glanced at Graig and then at the machine. "This? It's called an orrery. It's a model of the universe...don't look at me like that, I'm not mad, not yet...here, let me show you."

He walked around it, pointing at various circles and springs. "This sphere in the center, that's us...the world. This gold piece here is the sun, the silver and the bronze are the moons of Summer and Winter. This big thing here..." he tapped a broad band which encircled the inner workings, "...is the ring of the constellations. And these..." he pointed to a series of odd shapes set with varying gemstones, "...are the sigils. You see how this series of gears connects them to this sequence of runes, the seventeen runes representing, of course, the seventeen Barons Below..." The Undying glanced up at the blank, bewildered expression on Graigs face. "A little bit beyond your people, eh? Well, don't be too embarassed. It's from the Sorceror Kath." He stopped then, as if that would explain it all, but Graig continued to have all the expression of a rabbit blinded by a hunter's lantern.

Sighing, the Undying continued. "The Sorceror KATH. Gods, don't they even remember him where you come from? I mean, they know about me, why not him? He made me, after all...no. I see. They don't tell those tales anymore, do they? Well, fine. Never hurts to give the bards a reminder. Sit. " The Undying pointed to a chair, and Graig, unable to think but quite able to obey, sat.

"Kath...Kath ruled a large chunk of Tenzar, Balraius, and Older Di'ban..."

"Where?" Graig didn't mean to interrupt, but his desire to know overwhelmed, for a moment, his sense of self-preservation.

"Erm. They're all gone now, aren't they? Well, a lot of land. About the size of the The Seven Empires..that's still around, yes? Good. Like most such rulers, he was cruel, unjust, tyrannical...oh, in retrospect he really wasn't much worse than anyone else, but he was a conqueror. People like to be tortured by their own kind, they won't accept it when it's an outsider doing the killing."

"I was young then, maybe your age, maybe a bit older, and stupid. I was strong, I had a sword which my grandfather swore was magic (Of course, he also swore the Summer Moon was made of butter and the Winter Moon of cheese, which should have told me something), and I saw no reason why a man who had conquered five nations, and all of their armies, couldn't be taken down by one man with determination and a strong sword arm."

"You smile? Yes, I was a fool. I admit that freely, but unlike most fools, I survived my folly. Now then...well, to keep this story suitable for one of your short lifespan, let's just say I didn't get much beyond the very outskirts of his keep before his soldiers found me and took me in for judgement. I don't know why he chose to judge me personally...maybe he was bored."

"So I was tossed down before him, right at the foot of his throne, as per the usual manner of these things, and he ranted and raved much as you'd expect him to. Then he was distracted...some lieutenant had come in and was briefing him on the latest developments, so he looked away..."

"Then I saw it...hanging on the left arm of his throne by a thin chain, was a small knife. It looked like he would wear it around his neck, but he'd taken it off. I moved towards it..."

"Then he turned, done with his business, and spoke once more. I remember his words well. He said, 'You shall have all eternity to regret your crimes against me!' He meant it metaphorically, I'm sure."

"My hand was on the knife. I tossed it, taking him right in the heart. As he died, there was a flare of someting...of magic, I would guess. And I changed. I didn't realize why for a long time."

Graig nodded, suddenly. "His last words...a powerful wizard's last words....a death curse."

The Undying smiled. "Clever. Yes. Without even intending to, he'd placed a death curse on me....and his power was such that the curse took. I would, indeed, have eternity to regret what I did....all that power he had, the power to conquer so much land, bent itself to fulfilling his last words...to keeping me alive, forever."

Graig grinned. "It's like a...a teaching play. The evil one undone by his own evil."

"Yes...just like a teaching play." He paused for a second, his expression odd. "I hope you learn by it."

He was silent for a while, then, as he walked. He examined the mechanism once again, then walked slowly to the window and looked out over the valley sprawled below, then turned away from it to examine one of the many tapestries hung in the vast hall. As he moved, he kept looking at Graig with quick, sidelong glances. Graig did his best to remain still and silent, two tasks which were becoming progressively harder.

Finally, the great one, the undying one, the slayer of uncounted foes, stood directly in front of him, looked in his eyes, and said one word.

"No."

Graig shook his head, confused. "No...what?"

"No, I won't help you. Or your village or your kingdom or whoever it is you think you're representing. Let Azchor come. Let him go. He'll only be around for a month or three before he has to go back." With that, he turned, and walked back to his throne, sat, then looked one more time at Graig. He waved vaguely in the direction of the doors to the great hall. "I said no. Go."

Graig took a half turn, dejected, then spun back.

"In a month or two, all that you see out there will be lifeless ash! There are hundreds of people there!"

The Undying glared at him for a moment, arose, walked once more to the window. "When I built this castle, there was no one there at all. Then, over time, the people came. Now, for a time, they will be gone. Eventually, they will come back."

"Hundreds will die!"

The other man shook his head. "Hundreds die as we stand here. Let me show you something. Wait here."

He walked out of the room. Graig was left alone in the great hall. With nothing else to do, he explored it. It was vast, large as a barn, and filled with tables, chairs, and relics. But all was covered with dust, except for a handful of items the Undying must have used often. The throne, carved of red marble quarried from the distant lands of Enkhilia, was legend. So were the statues of the undying one, each crafted by a different artisan from a different century. And over here, against the west wall, was a weapons display...a dozen fabled items of legend. The glistening Sword of Kalzhic, the transluscent grey knife Shadowslicer, even the immense, nearly unwieldable True Axe Of The Forge. And one he had never heard of, a small dagger of no distinction whatsoever, odd among the various unearthly and supernatural blades which surrounded it. Could this be the knife, the one he'd told of? Why else would such a mundane item be here? Graig reached for it in awe...

"Hah! Youth these days! Leave them alone for a minute and they're swiping the silver!" Graig turned in panic, but the expression on the other's face was cheerful mockery, not baleful hatred. Graig tried to calm down, and staggered away from the case. The Undying was spreading out two large parchment rolls on a table carved from the bole of a single storm oak. He placed one on top of the other, and placed small bronze figures at each corner of the sheet, as weights. Then he tapped the papyrus and turned to Graig.

"Any idea what this is?"

Graig looked. It was a map, but he wasn't certain of what. Then a familiar set of curves and squiggles caught his eye. That looked like the Four Kingdoms, but so small! That would mean...

"A map. A map of the whole world." He looked up at the Undying with genuine respect, not the respect borne of terror he had had previously. "A map of the whole world." He reached for it, but the Undying took his hand and pushed it gently aside. "Heh. Sorry, but this one's mine. You'll have to get your own. But I wanted to show you something, to try to make you understand."

He moved his finger across the lands, calling out names as he did. "Enkhilia. Kalzhic-Cor. The Seven Empires, the Land Of The Ancient Green, Barattia. Over here, all of the Concordance Of Garryth. And then there's three other..." he said a word Graig did not recognize. The Undying noticed Graigs puzzled look.

"Sorry. That's a word which means 'large land mass'. The scholars in Kalzhic-Cor divide the world into four of them."

Graig nodded. "Four...kohn-ti-nets? Is that it?"

"The accent is poor, but you've grasped the concept. Look at them all, all that space. Each circle is a major city, as large as Vandor or Candiil. And there's so many more towns, and villages, and little settlements at the crossroads, and that's not even counting the Undermountain people, or the sea dwellers, or..." He shook his head sadly at the blank look in Graig's eyes. "You don't have any idea where I'm going with this, do you? Here, look at this. " He moved the map to one side, revealing the map he had placed underneath it, then tried to keep them both flat. The papyrus refused to stay unfurled, and he didn't have enough weights. His breath hissed between his teeth.

"Fetch me that knife you were trying to swipe before, would you? I need something to hold these blasted sheets flat. Heh. The man who tore the heart out of the Wyrm Tandentious defeated by a scrap of paper. Don't tell the bards, Graig, it will only sadden them."

Graig returned with the knife. It wasn't entirely boring -- there were some letters on it, unfamiliar ones, and it was heavier than it looked -- a good choice for a paperweight, he supposed. The Undying took it before Graig had had a chance to study it more closely, and placed it in such a way as to hold the maps flat. "Now then, look at the maps. What do you see?"

Graig stared at the two maps. He didn't know what was going on, why the Undying was doing this. Was this a test? If he answered correctly, would the Undying change his mind and help his people? Or was it all some strange, pointless game?

After a few minutes, he spoke. "The maps...look like the same place, I mean, the world. But most of the cities are...different. Vandor isn't there. And there's someplace called Direthius at the end of this river, but I know there's no such city there. Nothing's on the end of that river at all."

The Undying nodded. "And what do you think that means?" His eyes, the eyes that had seen forever, locked with Graig's, and Graig suddenly felt very, very, alone.

"I....I don't know! I just...I mean...I don't KNOW! I don't understand any of this...these maps...that machine...it's all...I just don't know." He stood there, shaking, while the Undying watched, waiting for him to calm down.

"Easy, there. It's just that you seemed a bit sharper than most I've seen in the past few centuries. Sometimes I forget, though, that intelligence is nothing without experience, and I'm afraid I've got you beaten there. Let me make it clearer."

He pointed to the second map. "This is the world, more or less, as it was when I was a child. Oh, don't look so suprised -- I'm undying, not unborn. I was a squalling infant same as you or anyone, once. And this," he pointed to the first map, "is of course the world today...well, a few decades ago, when I had it commissioned."

He started pointing to differences between them. "Direthius turned into a mud flat, Vandor born from a collection of shephards huts at a convenient crossroads. The Rivellian Empire forgotten completely, and now Enkhilia stands in its place, and doesn't even know it. The same story here, and here, and here. "

He paused and breathed in deeply. "Now then. We have this map, which shows the world as it is today, and all across it, people are dying. Here, " he stabbed a finger down on a country Graig never dreamed existed, " a war rages,and a thousand people die each week. Here, " and he swept his hand across a place called "The Desert Of Broken Shards", "a famine has virtually extinguished what was once a great people. And here!, and here!, and here! People being born, people dying, thousands of each every day. And now..." he gestured to the other map, "...consider all the hundreds of thousands, the millions, of people who have died since I first gasped for breath. All those people -- and their cities, and their languages, and their thoughts -- all gone, enough corpses to fill the ocean with tombstones -- and you want me to care about a few hundred farmers who weren't even living here two centuries ago? Why should I, when so many others have died? When you total up the number of people who are going to die this year, the consequences of one more demon invasion of one more peasant valley won't even be noticed! So tell me, Graig -- WHY SHOULD I CARE?"

Graig had no answer, just a white rage which blinded all rationality. Without even truly deciding to do it, he grabbed the dagger-cum-paperweight from the table, whirled, and plunged it into the heart of the man who could not be killed.

Of course, not being a trained fighter by any means, he missed.

Though not by much.

The blade did not impact the heart, but it did hit, a bit down and to the left, passing between two ribs and tearing a ragged gash across the chest and through the left lung. Graigs hand slid off the blood slick hilt of the dagger as he suddenly became aware of what he had done.

Why did I do that? was his first thought. The man is the UNDYING, he's called that for a reason. His second thought was that he, Graig, was going to die just a bit sooner than the rest of his people.

His third thought was that, for someone who was supposed to be -- and was -- immortal and unkillable, the Undying did not look at all well.

These thoughts collided together in the space of a second or so, so it was as if no time had passed when the Undying said, "Good. Good. I knew...feh, that HURTS...knew...you had some spark. You couldn't...couldn't all be shuh...sheep now. Good."

Graig knelt by the Undying's slumped body, reached for the dagger. The Undying shook his head. "Nuh...no. Leave it. For a bit. Removing it...just speeds the process...and I have...so much to te..tell you."

He fixed Graig with a stare, and his eyes suddenly looked normal. Forever had fled out of them. "I lied. I'm sorry, Graig, so sorry, but I...I just couldn't go on anymore and yuh...you looked like a good choice. Only choice." He closed his eyes, and breathed deeply, his face twisting, as bands of molten iron seemingly wrapped around his lung. "There wuh...was no curse, not as...as such. It was the knife all along. He...he was Undying, before...before me. He also tr..tricked me into killing...him."

"It has to be done with hate, you suh, see. Hate. You have to wield the knife in rage, and it tuh...takes the curse. To you. " The Undying looked up at Graig with dying eyes. "It's you nuh...now. You." There were tears, but of pain, or sadness, or both, Graig could not tell. A thin line of bloody froth was beginning to spill from the Undying's mouth, as a series of coughs tore at him.

"Don't loo...lose that knife...it will be your only hope, when you're d...done with it all. It has to be done with...with hate. Only true r...rage will do it."

Graig looked down at him, watched the life fade quickly away. This man was virtually a god, and his blood stained Graig's hands and his death was burning itself into Graig's soul. "Who made such a thing? Why? Why me?"

The Undying smiled, or at least, grimaced in a smiling way. "I don't know who made it. Muh...maybe some mad g...god. All mad, all of them. Think...think what just a few thousand years...did to me. They go on even long...longer. Why? Madness, I would guess. Why...why you....?"

The Undying closed his eyes for the last time. "You were here."

Then, the Undying...died.

Graig stepped back, not sure what to expect. The body to burst into flames? To age a thousand years in an instant and crumble to dust? Angels, or perhaps demons, to appear and claim the soul?

The body just lay there, dead. As dead as any cow stricken by plague or a drunk killed in a brawl. No choirs of saints, no brilliant lights, no visitations, signs, omens, or spectacles. Just the unmoving body of a dead man.

The hall, too, was suddenly empty. The Undying had given the place life, his essence had filled it, made it a home, not merely a building. Now it was just a large room with a dead body in it.

Graig bent down, pulled the dagger loose with a sodden squick of finality. He looked for something to wipe the blood on, then shrugged and wiped it on the Undying's cloak. He turned the dagger in his hands a few times.

I could dump it in the sea. Weight it and toss it in the deepest part of the Agrivian Sea, or any of a thousand other places where it would never be found. Then, I'll truly be Undying. Then he looked at the body and thought, and then there will come a time when I'll be envying every maggot-crawling corpse I pass. With care, he placed the blade in his belt pouch.

Now what?

What if it's all a joke? Just because he said that I am now undying...

Graig walked over to the blazing fire. Hesitating only a moment, he moved his hand towards the flames, prepared to draw it back at the first tinge of pain.

There was warmth, but no pain. He moved his hand closer, closer...into the fire.

Flame crackled around his hand. No pain. He was so astounded at this that he didn't notice his tunic was burning until the flames had reached his shoulder.

He ripped the garment off and stomped out the blazing sleeve, then reached again into the fireplace, picking up a burning ember, taking it out, and staring at it for a long time, as it sat in his hand, flickering and slowly cooling...but not burning. It felt no warmer than a pebble lying in the noon sun.

True. It is true.

He dressed again, as best he could, and walked across to the window. Darkness draped the world, but a flickering of small lights far below indicated his own village. A small, but very bright, glint farther away was Vandor. Somewhere out of view, but coming closer, was Azchor.

He had come here to get someone to battle Azchor, for there was only one man who was capable of the task. Nothing had changed in that.

The sword case beckoned to him. He went to it, and pondered. So many legends...he shrugged. The blade of emerald crystal, the Sword of Barak's Forging, had dispatched many a demon, according to the talespinners. It would dispatch one more. He drew it from the case, and gave it an experimental swing.

He nearly fell over.

Fine. I've got a few weeks before Azchor gets to the outskirts. Time enough to learn the basics...and with my advantage, that ought to be enough.

Graig, Son of Jerryd, sometime teacher and sometime scribe, now the Undying, strode out of his hall, pausing only to adjust the remnants of his burnt clothing in the reflection on the polished surface of a wall-mounted silver shield. He looked at his own face, and peered deep into his own eyes.

Forever looked back.